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Henry Arundell reveals plans for England future after loss to Bath

Speaking to Jim Hamilton the Big Jim Show, Henry Arundell opens up on his reasons for moving to France (via RugbyPass.tv)

Henry Arundell’s Racing 92 suffered an away loss to a determined Bath Rugby outfit in the Champions Cup on Sunday, with the home side coming back from 22-8 down to win 29-25 at the Rec.

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The rapid outside back was “pretty gutted” post match but took the time to have a candid chat with The Big Jim Show‘s Jim Hamilton and Francois Louw, opening up on why he chose to stay in Paris and effectively close the door on England selection.

“I very much want to play for England. It’s just, unfortunately, the rules don’t allow it.

“For me right now I think the best things for me and my rugby is development, not necessarily playing for England all the time. Because while it’s fantastic and I love it, is it the best thing for my development at the moment?

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“I’m still very young. I need to learn the nuances of the game. The coach that I have [Stuart Lancaster], and the assistant coaches, Joe Rokocoko and Fred Michalak, they’re guys that have been there, done that as players.”

He also touched on the influence of double world cup winning Springbok captain, Siya Kolisi.

“There’s more to rugby than just the skill, learning off Siya outside of rugby, even leadership stuff. Whilst I’m young, I want to be able to lead eventually at some point when I’m in a team and have influence on a culture.

“For me it’s very much a development focus and in three years I’ll 100% be back to England to play and put myself forward for the 2027 World Cup.”

The 21-year-old offered his thoughts on why the RFU and England have the policies that they do.

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“I one hundred percent understand why they do it. It makes complete sense. You’ve got to look after your domestic league and you want the best players playing in the domestic league.

“My experience now playing in the Top 14, every club we go to, all the fan bases, as soon as they see Gael Fickou and Cameron Woki, it’s massive. It’s paparazzi, it’s everything. They love it. Fans want to talk to all of them. And that should be the same here. England internationals should be the biggest faces in this league and I understand why they do it.

“Obviously now, I’m going to say I’d love it if they open it up… but I understand why they do it.”

He added that when having a private conversation, it was clear that England head coach Steve Borthwick wants him in the white jersey.

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“He fully wants me to play for England and I’ve got so much respect for him. We had a very good conversation and I told him this is purely development and this three-year contract is not for me to just enjoy playing in France and eat croissants every day.  It’s to get better for England, when I come back, I’m a better player for England. When I was playing for England I wasn’t the best player I could be and even now I’m still learning a lot.

“Playing in the big games, playing in the Top 14 each week where every game is massive and you have to win, that’s where you learn. You learn to fail and you learn to get better and maybe avoid that English media side of things – that can sometimes have a big influence on young players.

“So I’ll be there for three years, three-year contract and come back and hopefully be the best version possible to be picked for England and offer the best for England.”

Watch the full post match chat with Arundell at RugbyPass.TV

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3 Comments
f
finn 341 days ago

The problem with this is that there are three things keeping Arundell in the England squad.

1) he is very good at rugby
2) he is very young, so will be selected ahead of equally talented players who are older than he is (eg. Murley, Cokanasiga)
3) he has spent quite a bit of time with the squad already, so will be selected ahead of equally talented players who don’t have existing relationships with the players and coaches (eg. Reed, Roebuck).

As time passes, (2) and (3) will no longer hold true, so he will only stand a chance of making the 2027 squad if he is head and shoulders above of the alternative options. You would think that signing a 2 year contract would have been a much better idea, so he could have made himself available for the summer of 2025. Not only will he, in 2025, be younger and a more recent England player than he will in 2026, but he will also be in contention for the Lions as well as England. Given that, and the fact that England will be picking from a wider group of players as a result of their best players being with the Lions, Arundell would be pretty much guaranteed selection.

N
NHinSH 342 days ago

Can’t argue with any of that to be fair

J
Jon 342 days ago

Headline ‘Hard Brexit costs young brit job”

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JW 3 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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